5 cognitive biases to avoid for better creative decisions

You make snap decisions daily about people you meet and projects you work on. Those snap decisions, and even the ones that take a little longer to make, are often based on a set of structured patterns of thinking called cognitive biases.

It’s easy to see why these biases evolved.

Picture this: it’s the Pleistocene and you have to make a really quick call on whether to take your tribe into a certain new geographic location. You don’t have time to write a list of pros and cons, then deliberate with the group on the best path of action.

You have to call it.

Now.

The same mental shortcuts remain helpful at times.

But they can also get in the way of good choices.

There are over 100 cognitive biases that have been identified by psychologists and economists. Here are the ones most likely to stymy the working lives of creatives:

Conservatism Belief

When old established information is favoured above new more recent information.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

When unskilled people overestimate their skills and skilled people underestimate theirs.

Functional Fixedness

Limits the use of an object to what it is designed for. Absence of this bias is one of the markers for increased creativity. And the practice of relinquishing the bias can help you boost creative thinking.

Hyperbolic Discounting

This is the tendency to favour short-term immediate gains over longer term gains. Leads to poor long-term decisions.

Planning Fallacy

The tendency to underestimate the time it will take to complete certain tasks.

Which ones are you most prone to?

Consider some of the poor creative decisions you’ve made. Are they a consequence of a cognitive bias on the list?